STANDING at the entry-way of the new year, the meditatively-minded are naturally impelled to survey the past and scan the future, and this exercise is likely to prove especially interesting to those who are noting the state and trend of religious belief. Jesus' inquiring appeal, just before the close of his earthly ministry, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" has provoked a great deal of wonderment respecting the occasion and significance of his thought, and attempted explanations have generally been far from satisfactory. But as one follows the course of religious history, and finds that many professed Christians dissociate the life of the Master from those distinctive ''miracles of mercy" which have so prominent a place in the Gospel narratives, and which in the first century fulfilled the longing hopes of the suffering and needy, he begins to understand the nature of that fore-vision which prompted the Master's seemingly sad plaint.
The fundamental note in the life of Christ Jesus is spiritual supremacy. Shorn of this, it would have to be classified as a winsome but weak theoretical pretense. If he was not practically and consciously sovereign over both the mental and physical ills which handicap humanity, then his disciples were sadly awry in their statements regarding him, and many of his most frequently-repeated sayings must be classed as fiction. Moreover, if he were not thus sovereign, the hope which has been grounded in him as the Saviour of men here and now, becomes but "a reed shaken with the wind "
The great body of Christian people have not thought of disputing our Lord's authority over so-called physical law, though failing, as they would allow, to fulfil his command to continue the works which, according to his teaching, were to characterize effective faith, and which were ever to remain its true test and phenomena. Nevertheless, it is true that today many Christians are practically repudiating their belief in everything connected with the life of Christ Jesus which is not in keeping with material law, and are endeavoring to make it appear that his kingship and priesthood make no call for the physical healing which, as they say, "human credulity has associated with his earthly life." One of New England's most cultivated and widely-known "orthodox" ministers has recently published a book in which he openly subscribes to that ultra "higher criticism" which repudiates everything connected with the life of Christ Jesus that is not explained by "natural law."
